time to alert the federal government in
advance, because he was concerned that
terrorists might be planning to use the
airport to attack his city.)
Behavior like that, alongside Daley's
radical efforts to improve Chicago schools
and the city's forward-thinking environ-
mental policy, is the envy of politicians
who enjoy less latitude. "He's treated al-
most as a rock star-I'm not exagger-
ating," Joe Moore, a Chicago alderman,
said of the scene at meetings of the Na-
tional League of Cities. "It is fascinating
to see. They shake his hand, get auto-
graphs, just express their admiration." Ed
Rendell, the governor of Pennsylvania
and a former mayor of Philadelphia, told
me, "He's the best mayor in the history of
the country, I think."
Some local environmentalists say that
Daley favors flashy projects over sub-
stance-recycling, for instance, lags be-
hind programs in other cities-but AI
Gore told me that Daley's environmental
initiatives are "an incredibly impressive
world -leading effort. He gets that in his
bones. It's not a P.R. trip; it's not green
varnish." Gore added, "He has an im-
pressive way of twisting arms-or what-
ever body parts he has to twist-to get it
d "
one.
Shortly before Christmas, Daley will
officially surpass his father and become
the longest-serving mayor in Chicago his-
tory, a prospect that invites attempts to
reckon with the Daley legacy. "I think he
uses political muscle in many good ways,"
Andy Shaw, the director of Chicago's
Better Government Association and a
veteran political reporter, told me. "But,
on the other hand, he's a bully, and he ter-
rorizes a lot of people, and he tnùy never
tackled corruption and patronage and all
of its negative tentacles head on."
Daley's record has impressed even
some of the most ardent opponents of the
Old Man, as his father is known. "Rich
Daley is a tough son of a bitch," Bill Singer,
a lawyer and former alderman who ran
against the father for mayor in 1975, told
me. "I'm saying 'tough son of a bitch' not
in a bad way but in a very good way. He
will do what he has to do to succeed, and
he's indefatigable." Singer swivelled to
face his office window, and swept his ann
across miles of the West Side. "That's a
new building," he said. "That's a new
building. That's a new building. All those
over there." He pointed at tour boats drift-
ing along the Chicago River. "People want
to live here!" he added, with wonder in his
voice. Did Singer ever expect this from the
son? "Not in my wildest dreams," he said.
D aley is an unreconstructed old-
school pol: rarely glimpsed without
a suit jacket, fluent in the ancient politi-
cal rituals. He is especially good at going
to wakes. "He has a style-he gets there
a little early," John Schmidt, his former
chief of staff: said. "It lets you get in and
out, because no one else is there." The
Mayor is intensely wary of outsiders, and
has a small circle of confidants: his broth-
ers-Bill, John, and Michael-and a few
buddies from the old days. His sport-
cycling-is solitary. "He's really one of the
shyest people I've known in public life,"
David Axelrod told me. "He cowd be in
a room full of friends and stand in the cor-
ner uncomfortably."
Politics is the family business. Bill, six
years younger than the Mayor, is involved
in national Democratic circles; John is a
powerful county commissioner who still
lives in the South Side neighborhood,
Bridgeport, that is the Daleys' traditional
power base, and where he also runs the
local Democratic organization. (Though
the Mayor's three children, Nora, Patrick,
and Elizabeth, have stayed away from
politics almost entirely, his nephews Peter
and Patrick Thompson, sons of the May-
or's eldest sister, Patricia, are prominent
Democratic fund-raisers.)
Daley is a devout Roman Catholic
with a punitive sense of moral clarity:
among his early uses for the Internet was
a Web site dedicated to posting the names
and mug shots of johns picked up for
soliciting within the city limits. A bad
sleeper, he frequently badgers his aides
with midnight phone calls. ("He cowdn't
send e-mails if his life depended on it,"
Bill Daley said.) Before the sun is up,
Daley begins clipping-a never-ending
accumulation of ideas and names and
snippets, culled from magazines and trade
journals and newspapers-and sends the
clippings on to staff people and friends,
often without comment. "If he doesn't
write a note, you're supposed to know
what he means," Lois Weisberg, his cw-
ture commissioner, told me.
If there is one thing on which his sup-
porters and his critics agree, it's that Daley
is fanatically proud of Chicago and ever
vigilant against disrespect from what he
calls "the New Yorks and L.A.s and all
that." A few years ago, he was visiting
Beijing, and I trailed him to some events,
including tea with Beijing's mayor at the
time, Wang Qishan. Wang, in an attempt
at small talk, mentioned that when he
visited Chicago, in the eighties, violent
crime was soaring and he didn't dare go
out. Daley replied, "I was not the mayor
then, and a lot has changed." Then he
mentioned that he had been especially
nervous before his visit to China, because
of the threat of" civil unrest." The meet-
ing did not last long.
Whatever Chicagoans think about
him, Daley seems to have seeped into the
city's cerebral cortex. In a trial a couple of
years ago that looked at city hiring prac-
tices, a manager under oath said that he
was in charge of insuring that toll booths
were heavily staffed along the route to
Daley's weekend house, to prevent the
Mayor from being subjected to undue
traffic. When reporters asked Daley about
it, he guffawed-"It's silly, silly, silly," he
said-and, indeed, there is no evidence
that he ever asked for such treatment. Or
needed to.
Shortly after talking to Bloomberg,
Daley was at a table with officials of the
Department of Streets and Sanitation. In
a city where a mayor once lost an election
because of lousy snowplowing, this might
as well have been his war room. He flipped
through a briefing packet, past sections on
alley sweeping and street lights, and lin-
gered on "Rodent Control." 'What about
Dunkin' Donuts?" he asked, referring to a
recent case.
"Fly infestation," the rodent-control
boss said.
'Who is the head of Dunkin' Donuts?"
Daley demanded, his voice squeaking.
'Why don't we send a letter to the presi-
dent, and-who owns these?" he asked, of
the local franchises. "Do we know who
owns these? Absentee landlord?"
He scoured the pages before him and
landed on another case-more flies, this
time in a Starbucks at the airport. "Send
a letter to Starbucks!" he said, poking the
air with his half-glasses. "To the chair-
man of the board!"
On his way home that night, Daley
stopped at a reception, at the Chicago CW-
tural Center, to mark Indiàs Independence
Day. The Indian consw-general met him
outside and ushered him toward a gantlet
of six young women who tossed rose petals
THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 8, 2010 41